“You weren’t strong enough?”

“I was in mourning,” said the girl, looking at him with her large and brilliant eyes.

“Yes, yes, of course!” murmured the Reader, not quite understanding why he felt himself a trifle snubbed.  He asked a few more questions, and his niece, who seemed to have no shyness, gave a rapid description, as she sipped her tea, of the villa at Cannes in which she had passed the winter months, and of the half dozen families, with whom she and her friends had been mostly thrown.  Alice Hooper was secretly thrilled by some of the names which dropped out casually.  She always read the accounts in the Queen, or the Sketch, of “smart society” on the Riviera, and it was plain to her that Constance had been dreadfully “in it.”  It would not apparently have been possible to be more “in it.”  She was again conscious of a hot envy of her cousin which made her unhappy.  Also Connie’s good looks were becoming more evident.  She had taken off her hat, and all the distinction of her small head, her slender neck and sloping shoulders, was more visible; her self-possession, too, the ease and vivacity of her gestures.  Her manner was that of one accustomed to a large and varied world, who took all things without surprise, as they came.  Dr. Hooper had felt some emotion, and betrayed some, in this meeting with his sister’s motherless child; but the girl’s only betrayal of feeling had lain in the sharpness with which she had turned away from her uncle’s threatened effusion.  “And how she looks at us!” thought Alice.  “She looks at us through and through.  Yet she doesn’t stare.”

But at that moment Alice heard the word “prince,” and her attention was instantly arrested.

“We had some Russian neighbours,” the newcomer was saying; “Prince and Princess Jaroslav; and they had an English party at Christmas.  It was great fun.  They used to take us out riding into the mountains, or into Italy.”  She paused a moment, and then said carelessly—­as though to keep up the conversation—­“There was a Mr. Falloden with them—­an undergraduate at Marmion College, I think.  Do you know him, Aunt Ellen?” She turned towards her aunt.

But Mrs. Hooper only looked blank.  She was just thinking anxiously that she had forgotten to take her tabloids after lunch, because Ewen had hustled her off so much too soon to the station.

“I don’t think we know him,” she said vaguely, turning towards Alice.

“We know all about him.  He was introduced to me once.”

The tone of the eldest Miss Hooper could scarcely have been colder.  The eyes of the girl opposite suddenly sparkled into laughter.

“You didn’t like him?”

“Nobody does.  He gives himself such ridiculous airs.”

“Does he?” said Constance.  The information seemed to be of no interest to her.  She asked for another cup of tea.

“Oh, Falloden of Marmion?” said Dr. Hooper.  “I know him quite well.  One of the best pupils I have.  But I understand he’s the heir to his old uncle, Lord Dagnall, and is going to be enormously rich.  His father’s a millionaire already.  So of course he’ll soon forget his Greek.  A horrid waste!”